So said Richard Nixon in his interviews with David Frost. Nixon was talking about wiretaps and surreptitious entries to protect lives and safeguard national security in a violent and anarchic war decade.

The Nixon haters pronounced themselves morally sickened.

Fast forward to our new century. For, since 9/11, we have heard rather more extravagant claims by American presidents.

Under George W. Bush, it was presidential authority to waterboard, torture, rendition and hold enemy aliens in indefinite detention at Guantanamo.

Under Barack Obama, we don’t have a Nixon “enemies list” of folks who are not to be invited to White House dinners. Rather, we have a “kill list” — a menu from which our constitutional law professor president selects individuals to be executed abroad.

Not only in Afghanistan, but Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and who knows where else. And not just foreigners, but Americans, too.

When may Obama order an American killed?

According to a Justice Department “white paper,” any “informed high-level official” can decide a target is a ranking operative of al-Qaida who “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States,” and if we cannot apprehend him, order him eradicated with a Hellfire missile.

As law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell argues: “For a threat to be deemed ‘imminent,’ it is not necessary for a specific attack to be underway. The paper denies Congress and the federal courts a role in authorizing the killings or even reviewing them afterwards.”

And they called Nixon the imperial president.

As killing a U.S. citizen is a graver deed than waterboarding a terrorist plotter to get information to save lives, Obama, who bewailed Bush’s detention, rendition and interrogation policies, appears guilty of manifest hypocrisy.

But with 3,000 to 4,500 now killed by drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen over 10 years, and an estimated 200 children and other civilians among the “collateral damage,” it is past time for a debate on where we are going in this “war on terror.”

A question raised by Donald Rumsfeld years ago — Are we creating more terrorists than we are killing? — needs re-raising. For if these drone strikes that kill innocent and guilty alike are creating new millions of sympathizers for al-Qaida, and recruiting new thousands of volunteers willing to dedicate their lives to taking revenge against us, we have entered upon a war that may never end.

Al-Qaida in Afghanistan is said to be ravaged and on the run. Yet we read of al-Qaida affiliates cropping up not only in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but Iraq, Syria, Libya and Mali. How many of these new cells were inspired by past drone strikes to destroy old al-Qaida cells?

The New York Times and The Washington Post have admitted they acceded to White House requests not to publish their discovery that we had established a drone base in Saudi Arabia for attacks in Yemen.

But planting a U.S. drone base on Saudi soil is no small matter. Osama bin Laden gave as a primary cause for his declaration of war on America that we had defiled the sacred soil of Arabia that is home to Mecca and Medina by planting our infidel bases there.

After 9/11, at the Saudis’ request, we removed our bases. What will this revelation mean for that royal family? What will it mean for America’s image in the Muslim world? Is any benefit we derive from a drone base just north of Yemen worth enraging much of an Islamic world of 1.5 billion?

In his 1951 address to Congress, Gen. Douglas MacArthur declared: “Once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.”

Congress, the administration and the American people need to ask: Why have we been unable to bring this war on terror to a “swift end”? Why this “prolonged indecision”? Why has the battlefield in the war on terror not narrowed, but expanded from South Asia to the Middle East to North Africa?

Is the war on terror to be like the war on crime, eternal, with U.S. soldiers policing the world forever, even as cops police our cities?

What is Obama’s plan, the Republicans’ plan for ending or winning this war, whose scope widens with each year?

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” wrote the author of our Constitution.

As we see the great buildings of our capital enveloped in concrete barriers, as U.S. citizens are forced to submit to intrusive searches before boarding airliners, one wonders: How long before the Republic becomes a garrison state?

If we do not end this war, this war will one day bring an end to the freedom for which the Fathers fought.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

201231112413 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fbuchanan%2F2013%2F02%2F07%2Fis-america-ensnared-in-an-endless-war%2FIs+America+Ensnared+in+an+Endless+War%3F+2013-02-08+05%3A00%3A28Patrick+J.+Buchananhttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012311124 to “Is America Ensnared in an Endless War?”

The whole point is for there to be endless war. All taxes can then be funneled to war profiteers, their lobbyists and and the corrupt venal enablers in Congress and Senate. The system is working as intended.

When the Dutch sent their armed forces to their then former/still colony of "Oost Indie" (now Indonesia) after WW2 it was not called a war but a "police action". That is what our "war on terrorism" really is namely a world-wide police action involving drones and other means. Whereas the involvement of standing armies may end with peace or other treaties (see Iraq), policing as we know never ends and that is the fundamental reason why this so-called war on terrorism will never end unless our Congress or the UN or both begin to set rules on what this international police may and may not do. Or even end this endless policing of the world.

Perhaps it is time to broaden our vocabulary. Should we refer to our drone policies and torture implementation as "terrorism?" It is with certainty terrorism for those on the receiving end. The drone program for example has taken the lives of predominantly innocent civilians. Endless and brutal incareration at Gitmo, for example, cannot be construed as a gesture of peace to those incarcerated.
From recent disclosures about torture and drone warfare, it would seem that we are in replication of poliices and those we tried and executed in the wake of WWII for war crimes.

According to news reports the American taxpayer has "invested" close to $22 billion dollars in "training" an Afghan military/police in order for us to become "un-ensnared" in Kabul. Add that amount to the billions invested in Iraq and the potential billions in the process of being [ensnared] in Mali, Somalia, Syria, Israel, et al, and Mr. Buchanan's question becomes redundant.

Webster defines terror as
Acts that produce intense fear
And the intent of English usage
Is to be accurate and clear
But fear is so subjective
It’s in the mind of the beholder
So that threats to me aren’t threats to you
If you’re hardened, blind or bolder

The acts of terrorizing
Are to subjugate, destroy
Demoralize, intimidate
A most horrific ploy
Some are overt, while others hide
Behind the guise of powers
And terror wreaked its havoc
On the world trade center towers

But illegal occupation
And forcing curfews on the needy
Is psychological terror
That is inhumane and seedy
The killing of a bride and groom
By errant friendly fire
Turns a joyful celebration
Into a fearful funeral pyre

Let’s be honest as we struggle
To do the thing that’s right
Don’t accede to Sharon doctrine
Rumsfeld’s military might
Our integrity is compromised
When our actions end in error
We find ourselves unknowingly
Fighting terror back with terror

try since 1776! America has killed millions.WWI and WII would never become world wars unless America got involved. TRY READING UP ON PHILLOPINES AND HAWAII INVASIONS AND KILLINGS- evilness-LONG BEFORE 1941

Great article, again, by Pat Buchanan. However, I question his insertion of the quote from Gen MacArthur about applying "every available means to bring it (war) to a swift end." I don't understand what Pat means by quoting MacArthur and don't see how this fits into our many current self-inflicted prediciments. "Every available means", today, could also mean nuking our enemies. This so-called 'war on terror' does not at all fit the WWII model. It is, by definition, an endless war. In the long run it will destroy us, just as it has already shredded our constitutional rights.

Mr. Buchanan; I do not think Uncle Sam is "ensnared in an endless war" because such a sentence implies accident. "Dere I was, mindin' me own business, trekkin' tru da woods when – Whammo! – I stepped inna bear trap".

I do not disagree that there are unforseen consequences of His mighty acts.

But I think Uncle Sam has deliberately embarked upon a policy of open and endless war.

And I think this policy is directly attributable to military Keynesianism.